Dr. Jessica Ruglis is a professor of (in)human development, scholar-activist of public education and public health, participatory researcher, and youth advocate. For over twenty years, Dr. Ruglis has been an educator in elementary, middle school, high school, college, university and community contexts, across the US and in Montréal.
Ruglis’ academic, policy and community work focuses on the intersections of health, education, human development, (in)justice and equity; in particular understanding education as a social determinant of health. Ruglis serves on the Board of Directors for Chalet Kent (2017-present), and recently has collaborated with No Bad Sound Studios (2016-present) on the intergenerational community based participatory action research project Sampling Youth Development.
Ruglis’ academic work has appeared in American Journal of Public Health, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Transforming Anthropology,Preventing Chronic Disease,International Review of Qualitative Researchand Educational Studies. Her policy advocacy work has helped to support legislation in Maryland, California, Arizona, and New York City. She has facilitated youth participatory action research training in New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Montréal; and has led, co-led and collaborated with youth participatory action research collectives in New York, Montréal and Baltimore on issues of education, health equity, racial justice, policing, criminal (in)justice, profiling, and juvenile incarceration and sentencing. Dr. Ruglis has served as a consultant on issues of public health, health prevention and promotion, anti-racism, youth development, gender and sexualities, education policy, school leaving, healing informed care, interdisciplinary program and curriculum development, school based health centers, policy advocacy, and participatory approaches to research.
Ruglis did her postdoctoral fellowship in community based participatory research for health inequities at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (2009-2011) as part of the W.K. Kellogg Health Scholars Program, and is a proud graduate of CUNY (City University of New York) and SUNY (State University of New York) institutions and public schooling before that. She earned her doctoral degree (PhD, 2009) from the Graduate Center of CUNY, where her doctoral dissertation Death of a Dropout: Schooling as a Social Determinant of Healthwas awarded the Sponsored Dissertation Fellowship, and her masters in public health (MPH, 2009) from Hunter College. Ruglis also holds a masters of arts in teaching in secondary science and biology from Union College (MAT, 2002) and a bachelor of science in human biology from University at Albany (BS, 2000). Prior to entering higher education, Ruglis was a middle and high school science teacher, and an instructor and coach of youth sports (swimming, soccer, skiing). She approaches the academy as an athlete.
Ruglis lives in Tio'tia:ke (Montréal) where she is an Associate Professor at McGill University, which is on the unceded traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabeg nations, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations. We acknowledge and thank the diverse Indigenous people whose footsteps have marked this territory on which peoples of the world now gather.